In the meantime, PSTA paid a vendor $48,125 of your property
tax money to host three conference calls to "inform" you about the
benefits of adding a $100 million dollar tax load to Pinellas County; mostly
for a train that goes nowhere near where the 2% of Pinellas County residents
who actually use public transportation live or work.

You might want to dial into the next call and express your
opinion.

Most uninformed quote of the day: Brad Miller PSTA CEO,
"No one looks at sales tax rate before hitting that buy button for a
vacation on Expedia."

You can rest assured the states and even Florida counties
competing with Pinellas for those precious tourist dollars will be sure to
mention their lower tax rate in their tourism ads. And it's the ads that cause
those "buy" buttons to be pushed. Welcome to the real world Mr.
Miller.

As seen on TV

Also queued up by the folks out at PSTA is TV pitchman
Anthony Sullivan.In addition to some
very humorous TV ads, you may remember Mr. Sullivan signed on to the St. Pete
LENS issue with great gusto as a supporter. Another really bad idea.

Either Mr. Sullivan is deeply enamored by large, expensive
non functional public projects or he just can't resist the opportunity and the
challenge to sell something to people they don't need, won't use and costs too
much.

In any event Mr. Sullivan does bring some clarity to the
Greenlight issue.

If your are so desperate to get something past the voters
that you resort to infomercial style marketing, the voters, many of whom have
probably had the "as sold on TV" experience, should now know the
value and durability of the train to nowhere. You can read the whole debacle in
Christopher O'Donnell's St. Pete Tribune Article: Pitchman
throws support behind Green Light.

The people in St. Pete figured out and the LENs is history.
Such should be the fate of Greenlight.

The PSTA Honey Pot

Just in case you don't believe my comments about Greenlight
being the biggest redevelopment plan in Pinellas County history take a look at this
Tampa Bay News Papers Article: Developers present Seminole Mall vision.

If you read down far enough in the article you will find
this quote: "The project would also require cooperation from
the county. Other funding possibilities include Penny for Pinellas money,
community grants, Pinellas Suncoast
Transit Authorityparticipation, utility taxes and franchise
fees."

Every developer in Florida is looking to dip into the PSTAs $130
million dollar revenue flow to help fund their next massive Pinellas County
public project. Really interesting since the train goes nowhere near Seminole Mall
and the real objective is to move retail, and residential to the train stations.